Massachusetts Wins Race To The Top Grant

Second time's a charm for Massachusetts' application to the federal Race to the Top education program, through which the state expects to receive $250 million, half of which will go to Melrose and other participating school districts.

The U.S. Department of Education announced on Tuesday that Massachusetts, along with eight other states and Washington, D.C., will receive grants in the second round of Race to the Top. Thirty-five states and D.C. applied for the second round of grant awards.

At Tuesday night's School Committee meeting, committee member J.D. LaRock said that Melrose should see about $130K in direct aid. In January, the School Committee, Superintendent Joe Casey and the executive board of the local teachers' union, the Melrose Education Association, all approved Melrose Public Schools' participation in the program.

The total amount each school district would receive is determined by its funding for Title I funding, a federal program for extending extra help to students. Local school districts could apply in a competitive grant program for the remaining 50 percent of funds.

While Massachusetts was one of 16 finalists out of 41 applicants in the first round of grant awarding, in March the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) only awarded Race to the Top $600 million between two states, Delaware and Tennessee.

Along with $350 million Race to the Top funds set aside for a separate competition to improve the quality of assessments, that left $3.4 billion for the second phase of grant awards that are expected to be awarded in September and are designed to encourage education reforms.

In the first phase of awards, Massachusetts' application was highly regarded in the area of turning around under-performing schools, Melrose School Committee J.D. LaRock said at a committee meeting in June, but lost points for not adopting what were still undeveloped national core standards, which the state opted against because "Massachusetts is acknowledged as having the highest standards in the nation," LaRock said at the time.

Last month, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted to adopt those national "Common Core" standards. 

In June, LaRock said that the most substantive revisions in the state's second application are in the area of teacher evaluation. The new application proposed statewide implementation of revised teacher evaluation regulations that will be formulated by a variety of groups, including teachers unions.